Hit or missa

Time for another trip to Did you even listen to the same CD?

Today we visit Bernard Haitink's recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, recently released on BR Klassik.

Take it away, James A. Altena of Fanfare:

Rather surprisingly, Bernard Haitink added Beethoven’s Missa solemnis to his repertoire for the first time only a year or so ago. Unfortunately, whether that indicates a lack of elemental sympathy with the work, or whether the conductor simply has not had time to absorb the score with sufficient depth, this is a deeply disappointing reading that never rises above anodyne mediocrity.

Meanwhile on Musicweb, here's John Quinn:

This is an inspired and inspiring performance. We may have had to wait a long time for a Haitink recording of this great work but, my goodness, the wait has been worthwhile. His interpretation is distinguished from first note to last and, in summary, I come back to the word “wise”.

Altena:

Haitink here is the leaden Dutchman rather than the flying one; although the total time for the performance puts it a bit on the brisker side of the spectrum, it feels plodding, as the conductor dutifully moves from measure to measure with no greater vision or objective. There is no forming of larger arcs or units, no inflection or shaping of phrases, simply a largely lukewarm sameness of temperature. Any notion of building momentum, of creating and releasing dramatic tension, is absent. 

Quinn:

At the time of this performance he was 85 and while there’s absolutely no sign of age diminishing his energy what is abundantly evident is that we are hearing a performance into which the accumulated wisdom and experience of six decades of conducting has been invested. I found this a profoundly satisfying reading in which everything seemed just right.

Altena:

The orchestra and chorus do what is asked of them to professional standards, but one has the sense that their hearts are not in it.

Quinn:

the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks proves yet again that it is currently one of the finest of all European ensembles ... right from the start one is impressed by the warmth and depth of the orchestral sound and by the excellence of the choir.

Altena:

Even if there were stronger leadership from the podium, this performance would be sunk by the substandard work of its solo vocal quartet.

Quinn:

Haitink also benefits from the presence of a splendid quartet of soloists

Altena:

This one, alas, is a non-starter.

Quinn:

There are several fine recordings of Missa solemnis but this one has now to be counted as one of the leading recommendations.

A Madge made in...

Hmmm... Geoffrey Douglas Madge plays Busoni's piano music on 6 CDs. I wonder is it any good? Time for the latest "Did you even listen to the same CD?", which comes to you from 1988!

Here's Adrian Corleonis in the May/June '88 Fanfare:

Madge's credentials for this project derive from his performance and recording of Sorabji's stupendous four-hour-long Opus Clavicembalisticum ... The surprise, however, is not that Madge plays Busoni as he does Sorabji, but that this more familiar fare cruelly exposes a remarkable clumsiness. His weaknesses begin with the difficulty of maintaining a steady pulse, hesitations posing as rubato, and huge ritards stifling many of the codas ... The near-stammer and feeble tone of “Turandots Frauengemach“ are incredible—and unacceptable—from a pianist of Madge's pretensions. ...  the overall impression remains labored, literal, and disappointing.

And Kyle Gann in the Nov/Dec '88 issue's Want List section:

Madge's stunningly intelligent performances made the Sonatinas' logic perfectly clear for the first time. I hate to think that, had it not been for this incredible pianist, I might have died not knowing such charming works as the Macchiette Medioevali. Heaven on a disc. 

Oh my God they killed Mozart! (or something)

Good evening and welcome to a special Heavyweight Death Match edition of Did You Even Listen To The Same CD?! Our lucky/unlucky album this time round is John Butt and the Dunedin Consort's new recording of Mozart's Requiem, released by Linn earlier this year. And folks do we have a battle royale tonight! In the blue corner we have Fanfare's Jerry Dubins, and in the red corner it's Fanfare's Lynn René Bayley. Oh yes indeed. They've been here before: you know what they can do. No holds barred. Hide under your seats for this one.

Dubins: "Happily, I can report that this new Mozart Requiem is both terrifying and terrific. The performance is distinguished by exceptionally well-defined, crisp, and transparent articulation in both the orchestral playing and the choral singing, with the result being clarity of textures and diction seldom heard even in other slimmed-down period instrument performances. The effect is further enhanced by a recording of atmospheric openness and luminous lucidity."

Bayley: "I will give conductor Butt this much credit: In the dramatic passages, he does kick some energy into his orchestra, but as soon as you reach any sustained passage the strings and winds sound like a MIDI, likewise the chorus. In the Recordare, the singers approach their task as if they were warbling madrigals."

Dubins: "Butt achieves his results with four excellent vocal soloists..."

Bayley: "I defy anyone to put this recording on and tell me that any of the four singers heard here “move” you. Perhaps contralto Rowan Hellier, who is the only singer here with an inadvertently tremulous flutter in the voice? Well, perhaps, if you are “moved” by tremulous flutters. From the standpoint of expression, her singing is as neuter sounding as that of soprano Lunn (who sounds like a young girl), tenor Hobbs (who sounds like a pre-pubescent teen), and bass Brook (who has a “nice” voice, but no more than that)."

Dubins: "I will now state unconditionally that this is the Mozart Requiem to have, and I won’t even qualify it by saying “among period instrument versions.” It simply goes to the very top of the list of any performance of the work I’ve heard. Urgently recommended."

Bayley: "If you need a drink coaster, this one will do the job."    

I am so sick of these people

Efforts to find a cheaply downloadable (ie, available on eMusic) recording of Rachmaninov's Symphony no.1 brought me to a 1979 performance by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky with the BBC SO, released on BBC Legends.

Bob Briggs on MusicWeb:

...at the time, this performance was a revelation. It’s high powered, passionate and forthright... this is an interpretation of great stature and one of the best performances of the work currently available.

Barry Brenesal in Fanfare:

...an impressive affair, buoyed along by the conductor’s attention to detail and the grandly theatrical gesture. ... This recording has quickly moved to the front rank of my favorites, alongside Svetlanov

Andrew Achenbach in Gramophone:

...a perplexing letdown. Rozhdestvensky presides over a fitfully involving but at times uncomfortably rowdy display that does his reputation no favours at all... the performance as a whole pales next to the towering splendour of Svetlanov's volcanic 1966 recording

(And now it's time for my semi-regular apology for not blogging. Many many circumstances have been intervening. But in a couple of weeks I hope to have a spectacular retrospective Nereffid's Guide Awards thing. Stay tuned.)

 

Ho hum, an absolute gem

Here's the latest album from "the great and mysterious Russian pianist Daria Gloukhova", as Lynn René Bayley calls her in Fanfare; "she is so good, that for me at least each release is like a gift from above". Or, as Brent Auerbach said in American Record Guide last year, "Some promise can be seen in the playing of this young Russian pianist, but not enough for me to recommend that you seek her out". This year, Auerbach says "I criticized her for "scrabbly" playing and immature pacing. Although these elements are not yet fully expunged, here they plague only the first work on the program, the Grieg sonata".

Oh dear, Lynn, is the Grieg bad? "one is sucked into Gloukhova's very personal sound world from the very first notes". Well, that doesn't quite answer the question. "This is great piano playing". Ah. Brent? "it quickly becomes clear that even this modest work is too big for her... There is not enough excitement in this performance to even fill a salon, let alone a concert hall". Oh.

What about her John Field? "Even if they were executed perfectly", Auerbach tells us, the nocturnes "might not strike us as much more than quaint". Or, to put it another way, as Bayley does: "That she can be consistently lyrical, yet lack any preciousness or bathos, shines through gloriously in her equally unique readings of John Field's nocturnes".

And the Mendelssohn Fantasy? "a work that she invests with every ounce of her heart and soul", says Bayley. "padding", says Auerbach. Tell us about the first movement! "In the opening Con moto agitato", Bayley says, "one almost feels she is baring her own emotions through the music, so potent is the headlong rush of the agitato passages. The music cascades down the descending 16ths toward a pit of emotional blackness". I'm sorry, I'll read that again, this time using Auerbach's voice: "more dreamy than it is agitated, sounding lost sometimes".
What's the poor consumer to do?-

"You wouldn't want to encourage this sort of thing"

So, of the 1,542 discs on the long list for the 2011 Nereffid's Guide Awards, 38 (= 2.5%) received the best possible review from one source and the worst possible review from another. (There was complete consensus on 97 discs, as it happens). In some cases, critical opinion spanned the entire spectrum - such as in Mikhail Pletnev's Tchaikovsky 5 on PentaTone and Gustavo Dudamel's Tchaikovsky/Shakespeare disc on DG. But in other cases there was general praise with one dissent. Here's some examples.

Rachmaninov: Piano concertos 3 & 4. Leif Ove Andsnes; London SO/Antonio Pappano [EMI]
Ian Lace on MusicWeb (a Recording of the Month): "the partnership of Andsnes and Pappano delivers a beautifully-judged, nicely-balanced reading of heroic power and beauty. Andsnes’s fleet and tigerish playing dazzles. There are so many little delights, so many cherishable nuances in this reading."
Richard A Kaplan in Fanfare: "The opening solo serves as a template for the entire enterprise; there is no phrasing of the melody, just a succession of notes. ... And so it goes: Technical passages are too aggressive, lyrical ones given short shrift."

Debussy, Ravel, Dutilleux: String quartets. Arcanto Quartet [Harmonia Mundi]
This got top ratings from Classics Today France, Scherzo (Spain), and Pizzicato (Luxembourg).
Fanfare's Boyd Pomeroy: "The Debussy receives a dream performance, of silken refinement and great subtlety of expression - a very French kind of animation and inflection of line, minutely attentive to nuances of dynamics, articulation, and tempo modification. ... The Ravel is every bit as good, a textural and coloristic feast"
ARG's Gil French: "... insufficient articulation that turned the sound into a legato blur. The more I listened, the more I realized that the players themselves have a very poor feel for balance. In the Debussy and Ravel both the first violinist and cellist underplay their more tender lines to such a degree that I had to force myself to even notice them. Even worse is that the Arcanto Quartet have a very poor feel for pulse. Tempos shift constantly, destroying each movement's continuity".

Mozart: Piano concertos nos.14, 15 and 21. Christian Zacharias (p); Lausanne Chamber Orchestra [MDG]
Earned a Diapason d'Or, a 10/10 from Classics Today, and an Outstanding from International Record Review.
IRR's Nigel Simeone: "playing [from Zacharias] of disciplined energy, refinement and faultless, even-toned technique. ... Altogether, this is some of the most distinguished Mozart piano concerto playing I've heard in recent years"
ARG's Donald Vroon: "So here is the latest sterile style of playing applied to Mozart's lovely concertos - and it stinks... The pianist is choppy and never plays a phrase, just a pile of unconnected, mechanical-sounding notes. ... This is simply dreadful. Don't encourage this kind of sterile dogmatism by buying it."

Schubert: Rosamunde. Musikkollegium Winterthur/Douglas Boyd [MDG]
Both Victor Carr on Classics Today and Donald Vroon in ARG agree that the best recording of Rosamunde is the Münchinger/VPO one on Decca. But for Carr, the Münchinger is "the only serious rival to this new recording", whereas Vroon opines "This new one is not even worth considering".
Carr: "Hearing the three dramatic chords that open the Zauberharfe overture played by this excellent Swiss orchestra (the oldest in Switzerland) I was immediately struck by the clarity of attack and rich instrumental color. As the performance progresses the Musikkollegium Winterthur exhibits an alluring full-bodied tone and characterful playing completely in the Schubertian style."
Vroon: "Atrocious. This is another misconceived fad recording; don't buy it - you wouldn't want to encourage this sort of thing. ... conductors like Boyd are determined to uglify our music - even romantic music like this. SACD sound is no help when the orchestra is made to play like a baroque band and sounds so terrible."

What does Calum MacDonald mean?

BBC Music's Calum MacDonald gets snotty while reviewing Khatia Buniatishvili's new Liszt disc:

'I was always aware that my first recording had to be a portrait of Liszt,' says Khatia Buniatishvili in her stupefying booklet note. 'Only he would enable me to present as a unity the many aspects of my soul.' Well, pardon my ignorance: I always thought a performer's prime duty was to convey the essence of the composer, not of themselves.

Unless he's omitted some context from the Buniatishvili quote, MacDonald's arguing against a straw man here: she never said it was the performer's prime duty to convey the essence of themselves. I read this quote as "My first recording had to be a portrait of Liszt because he's the composer that speaks so closely to me personally". If there's a "me" in there, it's because, well, it's her recital, and pianos don't play themselves. So why did MacDonald bring the point up, especially since he goes on to give the performance 4 stars out of 5, thereby endorsing her approach?
Welcome to a special edition of "Did you even listen to the same CD?" with only one reviewer.
You see, we have "focused intensity" for the Liebestraum no.3, and we have a "mesmeric sense of inwardness" in the transcription of Bach's Prelude and fugue in A minor, and we have an "eloquently desolate account" of Lugubre gondola no.2.
But! "There's not a trace in this recital of Liszt's philosophical depth".
He can't seem to get past what he calls "the self-regarding aspects of the exercise". While conceding that "there's some dumbfounding playing", he contrasts this recital's "deranged conviction" with the "magisterial perfection" of Nelson Freire's new Liszt disc. But he does admit that "this is probably how they played in the 19th century".
Wait a second, didn't Liszt live in the 19th century?

Big in Taiwan

Well, hello to all the users of Plurk.com! A sudden spike in page views can be traced to a bunch of people having a look at my "Did you even listen to the same CD?" series.
But I have no idea why.
Anyone out there want to let me know? Comments are open...

Right hand/Left hand

I'm not sure quite what the relationship between the "Building a Library" feature in BBC Music Magazine and the "Building a Library" segment in BBC Radio 3's CD Review show is. The latter used to inform the former but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Anyway, there exist 2 conceptual items from the BBC entitled "Building a Library".

Last month's one in the magazine was Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. The top choice was Karajan/Bergonzi/Cossotto/Guelfi, but what we're interested in here is the one that appears as "One to avoid", about which this month's library-builder Ashutosh Khandekar says

In a field full of great contenders, my caveat goes a set [sic] that has been much praised but has serious flaws. Decca's 1966 version conducted by Silvio Varviso is radiantly recorded and has a great cast, but none of the soloists are caught in their prime. An inexperienced Elena Souliotis makes for a wayward Santuzza. Gobbi has superb dramatic instincts as Alfio, but lacks his finest vocal sheen. And del Monaco has lost the lustrous quality of his early years.

All well and good, but what image did they use to illustrate this "much praised" but flawed release?

Oh dear... does that say "A First Choice Recording from Building A Library"?

So, what changed?

American Record Guide's Donald Vroon is very enthusiastic about Naxos's release of Sibelius's Symphonies nos.1 and 3, performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Pietari Inkinen:

"...a wonderful conductor... He is Finnish; he understands that Northern icy temperament. But he is young, and he feels the music - it's not old hat to him yet, not just another Sibelius symphony. It's still fresh, and he still enters into it with his whole heart and gives it everything he's got - which is a lot. ... If the strings aren't quite lush enough to bring me to tears, they are still very beautiful - and the same goes for the wind solos... All [Inkinen's] conducting is faultless and admirable on this release."

I read that and thought, wait a minute, I remember something I posted last year... And yes, this is the same New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Pietari Inkinen that recorded a previous Sibelius disc of which the same Donald Vroon said:

"This is a very boring orchestra, with no tonal allure. The conducting is dull as well."

Swelling passion! Generalized haziness!

There wouldn't be a Nereffid's Guide Awards if there wasn't such a thing as a critical consensus, but sometimes a spanner gets thrown into the works.

For instance, successive pages of the May/June 2010 issue of Fanfare present rather contrasting viewpoints on one of the runner-up albums, Valery Gergiev's second recording of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. This is "a superlative performance", according to Christopher Abbott. Or, as Arthur Lintgen puts it, "there is almost nothing right about this recording". The thing is, "He seems to be totally lost in lengthy, lyrical passages like the Balcony Scene". Ah, but... "Gergiev handles the shift in emphasis from masculine to feminine with grace, humor, and finally, swooning, swelling passion". OK, so, that means...? "Believe it or not, this is mediocre, even dull, from beginning to end". I see. So what's the sound quality like? "The characteristically dry acoustic of the Barbican doesn’t interfere with the sumptuousness of Prokofiev’s orchestration; that same dryness aids the more acerbic nature of some of the scoring as well as providing clarity to the instrumental detailing; there is also no lack of atmosphere and depth in the sound". No - wait - "The sonics are best described as being soft-centered. There is a generalized haziness with a conspicuous lack of presence in the high frequencies. Sharp transients sound diffuse and seriously suppressed. This totally negates the effect of Prokofiev’s outstanding scoring for percussion. The overall softness of the sound seriously mitigates the music’s many dynamic contrasts".

Argh! Now I'm confused. Think I'll listen to some Rachmaninov instead, such as this recording of the Symphonic Dances, Isle of the Dead, and The Rock from Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO. After all, Classics Today gave it 10/10 ("you'd be hard pressed to find demonstrably superior versions of any of these pieces gathered together on a single disc.") and MusicWeb named it a Recording of the Month ("Buy this one – now! I doubt you’ll regret it and I hope it will excite you as much as it has excited me."). But wait, who's this leaping up and down waving a red flag? It's Fanfare's Richard A. Kaplan! "perhaps I must ask, as Charles Ives famously did, "Are my ears on wrong?" This CD displays a conductor who thinks it is his privilege to disregard, if not rewrite, practically every performance direction in the score... I don’t know whether young pianists and conductors are being taught these days that interpretive arbitrariness and self-indulgence are musical virtues... but I’m certainly not about to encourage them here".

Da/Nyet

Part of an occasional series in which we compare two reviews of the same recording and ask "Did you even listen to the same CD?"

For Dmitri Hvorostovsky's new album "Pushkin Romances" (Delos), BBC Music Magazine's Michael Scott Rohan goes head-to-head with Gramophone's David Fanning...

Rohan: "[Pushkin's] poetry's proverbially musical, but unlike some great verse it both inspires and repays musical settings"

Fanning: "if you want a disc to reinforce your prejudice that Russian song is all cloying self-indulgence, here it is"

Rohan: "featuring less famous but no less impressive figures such as... Sviridov, and Vlasov's elegant 'Fountain at Bakhchisarai'"

Fanning: "the kitsch-mongery of Vlasov and Sviridov"
Rohan: "Bringing them all to life is Hvorostovsky's performance"

Fanning: "a master of self-regarding baritonal syrup"

Rohan: "compelling delivery"

Fanning: " generalised intensity"

Rohan: "passionate, brooding or forceful with Pushkin's flowing lines"

Fanning: "a deadening uniformity of colour and expression across the board"

Rohan: Disc of the Month

Fanning: "Delos have some nerve expecting anyone to part with money for 45 minutes of such indifferent artistry".

Either/Or

Part of an irregular series of comparative reviews where we ask "Did you even listen to the same CD?"

Mozart: Piano concertos nos.24 & 25.
Valerie Tryon; London SO/Robert Trory
[APR]

Our competing reviewers today are Erik Levi of BBC Music Magazine and Gil French of American Record Guide.
Levi: ***** for performance, ***** for recording.
French: "The less said about Tryon-Trory's Mozart the better"
Levi: "The immediate interest... lies in the featured cadenzas... [both] work equally well in their very different ways"
French: "The cadenzas by Godowsky and Hummel are leaden"
Levi: "playing of great delicacy and subtlety"
French: "She has heavy fingers on quarter-notes... lack of tone color..."
Levi: "considerable affection... no lack of sentiment... great tenderness and musical sensitivity..."
French: "a generic, prosaic recording with all the notes and no character..."
Levi: Orchestral Choice of the Month.
French: "... the kind usually found in bargain bins in discount chains".

Heads... tails...

Let's say you wanted to know whether this recording of Brahms' Piano sonata no.3 and Waltzes op.39, by Antti Siirala on Ondine, is worth getting. Well, you could consult Jed Distler on Classics Today, who says of the sonata "Antti Siirala doesn't interpret Brahms' F minor sonata so much as he defoliates it. Scrupulous to a fault, Siirala irons out the music's craggy contours, takes great pains to extract hidden counterpoints, and tapers phrases to microscopic levels of calibration. The results soften the rhythmic impetus of bass lines and pedal points (especially in the first two movements) and miss Emanuel Ax's sonorous warmth and textural variety, to say nothing of Arthur Rubinstein's impetuous ardor. Both Murray Perahia and Clifford Curzon replicate Siirala's sharply articulated dotted rhythms in a more congenial, vocally oriented context, with infinitely more color." So, no, then. Well, let's see what Jerry Dubins said in Fanfare: "Training the fingers to play the notes is only half the battle. The other half is making sense of them. Here is where Siirala really impresses me... Siirala is a powerhouse of technical reserve; the richness, fullness, and solidity of his tone are visceral, helped by a superbly detailed recording. But as important, perhaps more important, is that in his hands what Brahms wrote suddenly sounds right. All of the pieces of the puzzle fit together. This is no small accomplishment". Huh. OK, then, the answer's yes.
But wait... what about the Waltzes? Well, Distler says "Fortunately, Siirala kicks up his dancing boots for the Waltzes, allowing their charm, swagger, and ingenuous cross-rhythms full due". Cool! Sounds like fun. Wait... what's that, Jerry? "Barely disguised in these lilting melodies is all of the angst, the loneliness, and the sense of isolation Brahms felt throughout his life and communicated with such vulnerable intimacy... Young as he is, Siirala understands this vulnerability; you can hear it in his playing."
Oh for goodness' sake! Did you two even listen to the same CD?

Did you even hear the same CD?

The albums that appeared in the Nereffid's Guide Awards are, by definition, those that were universally praised, or maybe at worst had one critic who was not overly impressed. Here's 4 albums that might have made the grade were it not for one oul' bollix who ruined it for everyone:

Bach: Solo violin sonatas and partitas. Viktoria Mullova [Onyx]
Nigel Simeone in IRR: "a great violinst - seemingly free of mannerism but with a superlative understanding of how to animate this music... all this is done within the bounds of superbly stylish Baroque playing".
Joseph Magil in ARG: "As usual, she plays like a student who has just learned a work and isn't yet sure what to make of it. Her attitude toward period performance is that it is a set of rules to be followed rather than a key to unlocking any of the music's mysteries".

Sibelius: Night Ride and Sunrise; Kuolema; etc. New Zealand Symphony Orchestra/Pietari Inkinen [Naxos]
Leslie Wright on MusicWeb: "This is one terrific disc! On the basis of this alone - and I gather from the reviews I’ve read of the first installment in his Sibelius series - Pietari Inkinen is a Sibelian of the first order. The young conductor, born in 1980, has the New Zealand Symphony playing its collective hearts out for him and the recorded sound is superb".
Donald Vroon in ARG: "This is a very boring orchestra, with no tonal allure. The conducting is dull as well".

Chopin: Piano sonata no.2, etc. Maurizio Pollini [DG]
Donald Manildi in IRR: "Pollini's lack of affinity for these works is clearly manifest in the mechanical hauteur of his pianism, his prevailing lack of colour and the unrelenting sobreiety of his approach. He reveals no fresh perspectives, no delight in Chopin's interplay of rhythmic and harmonic elements, and little beyond his well-known, tight-lipped, businesslike efficiency".
Jessica Duchen in BBC Music: "proves Pollini's stature as one of the greatest Chopin players of his time".

... and my favourite:

Schubert: Trout quintet; Variations on Trockne blumen. Martin Helmchen et al. [Pentatone]
David Hurwitz on Classics Today: "There is no finer performance available, and certainly none better recorded... this has got to be one of the most shapely, elegant, and effortlessly flowing versions ever committed to disc".
Jerry Dubins in Fanfare: "I found this disc repellent, and will never listen to it again".